No data caps, no blocked ports, and better support are pretty darn compelling.

Compared to other advanced countries, high-speed Internet access in the US is in notoriouslysorryshape, with high bills and low customer satisfaction. Even as commercials exhort customers to download music and stream movies, most ISPs are implementing data caps. Netflix and other movie-on-demand services are among the most popular online destinations, accounting for almost 30 percent of peak-time Internet traffic in North America, but using Netflix every night can bump a customer right up against their ISP's download cap.

Hosting your own game or Web server can also run afoul of ISP restrictions, either because ISPs block the ports you want to use or because running servers on a home connection violates the ISP's terms of service.

And computers and portable devices with ridiculous amounts of storage and processing power mean that everyone is creating content to share, but tiny upload pipes make that sharing unreasonably difficult.

But there is another way—a way to get vastly improved customer service experience and a connection free of caps and other restrictions. It simply requires that you participate in that grand old American tradition: voting with your wallet.

Most ISPs offer several grades of "business-class" Internet connections, intended for use by companies large and small. The prices can spiral up into thousands and tens of thousands of dollars per month for large businesses, but ISPs typically have offerings for small companies that don't cost much more than standard consumer Internet connections. They come with some additional benefits that might be of particular interest to the rabid Netflix watcher or the would-be home server admin, and nothing prevents ordinary folks from signing up. But is business-class Internet worth the money? That all depends on what kind of user you are. For me, it's essential.

The bennies

Let's run through the main features found in business class connections as compared to consumer connections.

No caps. Most major ISPs impose a per-month limit on the total amount of data you can download (out of the four we talked to, only Verizon's FIOS service lacked a cap). ISPs claim this allows them to manage traffic on their networks and keep any one person from using more than his or her "fair share" of the available bandwidth. The cap is typically at least 250GB per month, but it's becoming more common for customers to hit that mark, especially in households with several heavy Internet-using occupants. This results in a nastygram from the ISP or extra charges; repeat offenders might even find themselves disconnected.

Across the board, business-class connections lack bandwidth caps. They are still monitored for "suspicious" or "excessive" usage—you wouldn't want to run the next Megaupload out of your closet—but worrying about your monthly download quota is no longer necessary. Netflix and Amazon Prime Video fans can stream to their heart's content without worrying about receiving a letter from their ISPs.

Unblocked ports. Most ISPs firewall some inbound and some outbound requests on common low-order TCP ports. Some of this blocking is for security—for example, most ISPs block TCP port 25, the default port that SMTP servers use to send e-mail. This helps control the torrent of spam spewed by customers' malware-infected PCs. However, a business might want to be able to send and receive e-mail directly, and so business-class connections lack these port restrictions. Similarly, the terms of service on a residential account often forbid users from running servers of any kind, but businesses might want to self-host websites. Business-class accounts have few, if any, restrictions on running servers.

Static IP addresses. This is especially useful if you want to run a server. The prevalence of dynamic IP addresses among residential customers has led to many workarounds for folks who want to assign a domain name to their changing public IP addresses, but a static IP address makes such workarounds unnecessary. If you're going to run a Web or gaming server from your closet, it's extremely helpful to have a static IP address, since you can slap a domain name onto it and never have to worry about keeping up with dynamic DNS reassignment services.

Tech support. Calling an ISP's technical support line can be a horrible, frustrating experience. Understanding that businesses are on the hook for more money than consumers and that they need reliable support, ISPs treat business-class accounts far better. All ISPs have separate support lines for business-class customers; some, including Comcast, actually assign dedicated account representatives, eliminating the need to wait in the phone queue for most questions. In addition, business-class customers usually get priority over residential customers when scheduling technician visits.

The extras. Finally, ISPs have a raft of value-added services available to business-class customers. Some offer dozens of e-mail inboxes and free domain name registrations; most also offer Web hosting, an antivirus service for multiple computers, and some kind of collaboration software like Microsoft Sharepoint. These add-ons are of questionable value to home users, but they definitely have their place when viewed in the context of their intended market.

The price

So how much do these upgraded services cost? It depends on who your ISP is, where in the country you are, and how fast of a connection you want. I can relate my own anecdotal experience with Comcast in the Houston area, as I've been a business-class user for a couple of years now. My bandwidth is 16 megabits down and 2 megabits up, and I have a single static IP address. I'm not under contract. Here's my bill:

My Comcast Business Class bill, front side.

My Comcast Business Class bill, reverse side.

The service itself is $69.95. A single static IP and the required equipment rental for the SMC 8014 NAT router add another $12, and taxes and fees round out the bill to a total of $87.13 every month. This is without cable TV (I proudly cut the cord more than ten years ago) or VoIP telephone service; bundling services together can lower your overall bill just as it can with a regular consumer connection.

Pricing for business class Internet, unfortunately, is notoriously tricky to pin down. The tier of service I'm at doesn't even appear on Comcast's list of business-class plans, which range from $59.95 per month for 12Mbps down/2Mbps up all the way up to $369 per month for 100Mbps down/10Mbps up. The story with other national ISPs is similar. Cox's packages vary by region, with its "Select" tier (10Mbps down/2Mbps up, an included static IP address, and several other value-added features) priced at $59.95 per month in Cleveland but $103.00 per month in Arizona. We asked Cox about this variance, which appeared to be the largest among the ISPs examined, and they replied that regional prices are set by "local market dynamics," which include the price of competitors' services.

If you're lucky enough to have Verizon FiOS in your area, the starting price isn't bad at all, with its packages page showing $64.99 per month for 15Mbps down/5Mbps up; however, if you want a static IP address you'll pay a minimum of $104.99 per month for a 25Mbps symmetrical connection.

AT&T U-verse's business-class site is scant on details, but pricing ranges from $40 a month for 1.5Mbps down/1.0Mbps up to $100 a month for 24Mbps down/3Mbps up.

From the horse's mouth

Ars spoke with representatives from four large national ISPs: Comcast, Cox, Verizon, and AT&T. Each ISP pointed out the value of business-class services to businesses, but all four were hesitant to recommend them for a regular home user.

Roger Crisman, the marketing director for Cox Businesses Internet Services, noted that data from IDC shows that 50 percent of businesses in the US are home-based, and said that Cox's business-class offerings are designed to appeal to folks working out of the home. The prime differentiator he sees between home and business-class services is the support—Cox doesn't outsource business-class support, so when business-class customers call in for help, they can speak directly to a Cox employee. He also noted that extra features like online backup, cloud storage, and the Cox-branded McAfee Security Suite are designed to help out businesses too small to have their own IT support staff; this would obviously include home businesses.

Services aside, the lack of download caps and the unblocked ports are particularly appealing to power users, and Ars asked if Cox was seeing any uptick in business-class service adoption among home users who aren't running businesses and just want the extra features. Crisman replied that they weren't seeing any significant trends in that direction. Although IDC's data shows a huge number of home-based businesses, only about 10 percent of Cox's business-class connections are home business users—suggesting that most small home businesses use consumer accounts.

AT&T's Jim Gewecke, director of Small Business Product Management, did note that AT&T is seeing an uptick in business-class service adoption in homes, though not necessarily among regular folks looking for additional service and support. "While we can't disclose specific numbers or percentages," he said in an e-mailed statement, "more and more we're seeing home-based small businesses, telecommuters, and other work-from-home employees use AT&T services to ensure they have the connectivity they need to be productive."

Switching

For me, going business class makes sense. I get a lot of mileage out of my static IP and my unblocked ports—I have no fewer than four Linux servers in my closet and I host both a personal website and The Chronicles of George from them, along with a Minecraft server. I've become accustomed to accessing my NAS and all my computers when away from home, without having to worry about remote access ports being blocked; I also very much like my servers being able to directly e-mail me when they have trouble, without having to relay the mail through Google. Perhaps most importantly of all, I never have to worry about watching my download quota for the month.

Business-class service is absolutely right for me, and I'd never go back, but it's not right for everyone. If you value the same things I do—especially if you're looking to run a publicly accessible server from home—it might be right for you, too.

I sense a lot of Stockholm syndrome from this article - we are no longer arguing that US broadband isn't awful, or maintaining that it will become any less awful in the foreseeable future, merely looking for options to make it marginally less awful.

People commenting on the speed Mr. Hutchinson is getting are missing the point, I think. I think it is good to see an article highlighting a possible alternative to the sub-par internet in the US. Sure, it still isn't ideal (referring to the speed), but at least it gives people an idea of what else is out there. I for one had never considered moving off of a residential plan an onto a business plan, so this is valuable information.

I've said before that we need to stop complaining about the state of ISPs in the US and start doing something about it, and I think this is one way we can, as stated in the article, vote with our wallet.

This is why I thank God every day that the local phone company (Cincinnati Bell) went to fiber optics. FiOS was a pipe dream in my area, but Cincinnati Bell strolled through and is giving similar performance for the price. I'm currently paying $60/m for 30mbit down, and 10mbit up. They do block port 25, but otherwise their TOS explicitly allows home servers (within reason) and it's far more stable and reliable than my old Road Runner connection was. Road Runner did not seem too happy to see me go, either.

Overall, it's not download speeds that bother me for most US citizen connections, it's the upload speeds. I was, no joke, getting 15mbit down and 0.75mbit up on Road Runner for $50 before I went to fiber. Uploading videos was a royal pain, and streaming some game videos to Twitch.tv was literally impossible. I feel like cable needs to step the hell up with their upload speed offerings. It's not enough to offer a 1:10 ratio of download/upload speed anymore, in the day and age of YouTube, iTunes Match, cloud storage, etc.

Been using Comcast Business class broadband for about a year now (for a legit business mind you) and it's the best service I've ever had. I used to have AT&T DSL and before that regular Comcast consumer cable broadband. Comcast Business is like night and day. They're also like a completely different company in dealing with their customer service. They actually treat you like a customer for one and not like they're doing you a favor by allowing you to use their service.

For example, they email me a week in advance to tell me there's going to be some work in the area and my service "may" be interrupted between certain hours (usually in the wee hours of the morning). I've never had that. Usually, and especially with AT&T, if there's an outage, I'm the one one that has to report it...after going through about half an hour of "okay, let's check your settings, go into blah blah blah" before they finally realize there IS an outage.

Yes, I pay more for business class broadband, but it's worth it.

1177 posts | registered May 28, 2010

Lee Hutchinson
Lee is the Senior Technology Editor at Ars and oversees gadget, automotive, IT, and culture content. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX. Emaillee.hutchinson@arstechnica.com//Twitter@Lee_Ars

236 Reader Comments

With comcast, if you go the high bandwidth route (50mbit or 100mbit) business class is basically a must. I dont mean like.. for convenience. I mean literally a must. If you got that bandwidth because you actually intend to use it, you'll find you've blasted past their data caps in about the first 3-4 days of every month. They will literally threaten to kick you off thier service if you dont upgrade to business class. And what do you get from biz? Exactly what you were supposed to get from residential only at 4X the price. Bleh.

It's embarassing that anyone in the first world actually needs to bring this up as tech-news.

I'm in Australia, and I lucked out -- I'm on 750gb a month cap ATM. Funnily enough, the highest cap out of anyone I know, but at well below a quarter of the speed -- Hurry the f**** up, NBN!

I understand putting excessive limits on data, but only 18 months back, I had 20gb and that was it. And it sucked more than a bit of balls. I used to count my data, now I don't need to, and I think I hit around 40-50gb a month, and that's ALL legitimate: streaming music, games via steam, etc....

Time warner charges $229 for business class 50/5 connection, while regular version of the same is $99. So you are paying 129 for a static ip address essentially since everything else is the same. Time warner is a monopoly in NYC so they can basically do whatever they want.Its funny that i was paying $20 for a symmetrical 20/20 VDSL+ connection in Kazakhstan and basically all over Europe. Still waiting for FIOS to come to apartments in New York.

I have the same set up as the author, with 5 IPs. The downside of having a Comcast business class account for my home office is that they refuse to install the included free cable for my residential address. I find that absurd since I pay the same money as other businesses do. Hopefully Comcast would remove this restriction and let me enjoy what I pay for.

Officially, running a webserver is against the terms of use of the subscription I have, but if I do it anyway there are no complaints. They do block access to The Pirate Bay though, that's a bit of a shame, but nothing a hosts file can't fix.

lol, I have 'business class' Road Runner in the rural south at 50/5 for $100 a month. You're getting completely ripped off.

Hell, even I'm getting ripped off, but you're taking it in the pooper

"Market conditions" uber alles, unfortunately. I pay what I pay because that's what they've got. The two choices for broadband at my house are Comcast (max 16/2) and Verizon DSL (max 2Mb down, 768kbps up). The speeds for Comcast on business-class vs. residential are identical.

I don't exactly live in the sticks, either. I'm in a suburb of Houston, the USA's fourth-largest city. My suburb has ~100k residents. Even with that, there's no incentive for Comcast to change--AT&T doesn't service this area, so there's no U-Verse. VZ has stated they'll never bring FIOS to my neighborhood, even though it's available about 200 feet from my house. In the face of no competition and no chance of there ever being any competition, they can do whatever they want.

Boy, this article has made me - if nothing else - glad I have Verizon FIOS as an option for my apartment complex. I'm essentially paying the same price (~80 dollars a month) for a 50/25 line while your only advantage seems to be a static IP.

I'll take the faster speeds for the same price any day of the week. I still feel 80 dollars for what I get is a complete rip, but I really feel bad for the amount you have to pay.

Japan may be the home of tentacle pr0n and rabbit-hutch size apartments, but one of the few things I can be smug about living here is my apartment block's internet connection: 100Mb/s fiber, Ethernet sockets built-in to the walls (beside each power socket), no caps & its included with the rent.

Why do consumers here get more competitive offerings than the land of free-market capitalism & tech?

"Market conditions" uber alles, unfortunately. I pay what I pay because that's what they've got. The two choices for broadband at my house are Comcast (max 16/2) and Verizon DSL (max 2Mb down, 768kbps up). The speeds for Comcast on business-class vs. residential are identical.

I don't exactly live in the sticks, either. I'm in a suburb of Houston, the USA's fourth-largest city. My suburb has ~100k residents. Even with that, there's no incentive for Comcast to change--AT&T doesn't service this area, so there's no U-Verse. VZ has stated they'll never bring FIOS to my neighborhood, even though it's available about 200 feet from my house. In the face of no competition and no chance of there ever being any competition, they can do whatever they want.

Yeah we don't have U-verse either, and there's only one cable company in town. Really the problem is the manner in which providers have been allowed to zone areas for themselves with little to no competition in a cooperative manner. It's the standard 'big business screwing the consumer'. You should have contrasted against what Verizon gives people in the UK, which absolutely astounded me when I looked at pricing/packages.

.. I mean literally a must. If you got that bandwidth because you actually intend to use it, you'll find you've blasted past their data caps in about the first 3-4 days of every month. They

If you plan to use 250 GB * 30/3.5 = appox 2.1 TB per month every month, then yeah, get yourself off the residential circuit of accounting on the on the business one. Our family of four uses the network every day in an unfettered manner, streams daily, big Steam DL's, torrents, and so on and we barely get near the 250 GB limit on an extremely busy month. On average it is well below that. I'd say your usage does not match up to the average, or even 1 or 2 STD above, residental user.

Japan may be the home of tentacle pr0n and rabbit-hutch size apartments, but one of the few things I can be smug about living here is my apartment block's internet connection: 100Mb/s fiber, Ethernet sockets built-in to the walls (beside each power socket), no caps & its included with the rent.

Why do consumers here get more competitive offerings than the land of free-market capitalism & tech?

I thought ethernet wasn't supposed to run within several feet of power lines in the home? I ask because I was going to wire up the house shortly and had read such a thing repeatedly. I guess they had to do what they could do in an apartment. (Doubt it matters IRL anyway)

Comcast Business Class 12/2 $59.95 that's it, use my own modem, so no fee or taxes for that. Have a SIP box so Phone number costs $4.45 unlimited incoming $0.019 outgoing in cont US. No need for static, have had the same IP for 3+ years now with the Business account. Small web server and FTP server, avg traffic 350-400 down and 200 up each month. Not to shabby.

The poor author is getting reamed. Only in America would someone brag about having to spend more money to get pathetic internet speeds. This would have been an impressive article 10 years ago. Maybe.

I have the same Comcast plan the author does (12Mbps down/2Mbps down), but I am getting 35Mbps downlink and 5+ Mbps uplink consistently. Not bad at all with no cap, but I do agree with you after seeing some of the comments from other parts of the world -- It should be cheaper.

Japan may be the home of tentacle pr0n and rabbit-hutch size apartments, but one of the few things I can be smug about living here is my apartment block's internet connection: 100Mb/s fiber, Ethernet sockets built-in to the walls (beside each power socket), no caps & its included with the rent.

Why do consumers here get more competitive offerings than the land of free-market capitalism & tech?

I thought ethernet wasn't supposed to run within several feet of power lines in the home? I ask because I was going to wire up the house shortly and had read such a thing repeatedly. I guess they had to do what they could do in an apartment. (Doubt it matters IRL anyway)

You should avoid long (tens of meters) parallel runs, but terminating near it or running down a wall next to it is no big deal.

I used to do this exact thing. I live in Nebraska and have Charter Internet Service. Their business class prices were similar to their consumer class prices, but their bandwidth was much less. I was getting 15 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up on business class for the same price I could get 80 Mbps down and 15 Mbps up on consumer class with phone and basic cable TV.

I dropped my "business" account and switched to consumer, then outsourced all my servers to "pay per month" plans off-site. It probably only costs me about $10 per month to run some gaming servers and a ventrilo server that I was hosting before. Their quality of service is much better then I ever had. They have great uptime. I did have to go back to dynamic DNS and do some work arounds so I can still SSH back in to my box and access files off-site, but it wasn't too difficult.

Japan may be the home of tentacle pr0n and rabbit-hutch size apartments, but one of the few things I can be smug about living here is my apartment block's internet connection: 100Mb/s fiber, Ethernet sockets built-in to the walls (beside each power socket), no caps & its included with the rent.

Why do consumers here get more competitive offerings than the land of free-market capitalism & tech?

You gay more because their is more competition, at least that's what my Korean buddy tells me. He said there were no less than 5 ISPs available at his last apartment in Korea before moving stateside. I've lived in MA, CT, IN, MN, and NJ, and I've only ever had 2 ISPs to choose from, with one being slow ass DSL. As long as one side doesn't drop prices, neither will drop prices because they don't have to.

Business class and they force you to rent such a junk modem? I am almost turned off right there.

I bought my own Motorola SB 6121 because I was sick of the POS modems Comcast was giving me. First one fried in a storm and the replacement looked like it was chewed on by a dog. Not to mention insanely slow. Replaced it with my bought modem and things were 100x better. DOSICS 3.0 to boot.

In the UK, which is by no means the best for broadband in Europe, you can get a residential 100Mbit/10Mbit line (soon to be upgraded to 120Mbit) for roughly $56 inclusive of taxes from Virgin Media. No caps, no blocked ports and though you don't technically get a static IP, in my experience the IP address stays constant as long as the modem stays on. It's long-term enough to point a DNS alias at it.

Over in Sweden I think you can get services starting from 250Mbit, going up to 1Gbit for not significantly more than what the author is paying for a Comcast business line.

In Romania I get 60 Mbps up and down (that's 60 each) plus 100 minutes free national talk time on my home phone plus 100+ TV channels for the equivalent of $15/month. No caps, no blocked ports and fairly little downtime (only about 15-30 minutes of maintenance in a little over a year since I have this subscription and those were announced some hours in advance via phone and email). Never had it drop below 57Mbps. So yes what you people have in the US is kinda rubbish... actually everywhere I have been abroad the internet was crappy and expensive compared to here. Some ISPs here have started to have contracts that say something like "up to XX Mbps" which most of the time means anywhere between 0 to XX Mbps mostly 0. I stay away from those companies and the law helps... contracts can be negotiated and I can ask for a lower bound as well... so I can get some compensation if the reality is to far from the offer without any previously announced issues appearing.

Also like in France I get a modem, wireless router, receiver and cordless phone which stay mine after 5 years of contract or if I terminate the contract early I need to return them... but without any charge or termination fee. (no blu-ray player here though, but I can live without that)

I went the Comcast business route as well but it took some doing. Their consumer side first hooked me away from totally lame and inadequate AT&T DSL service with some package which they then failed to deliver in multiple ways across two months. After an enormous waste of my time I ended up with business. What a difference. Comcast consumer is apparently a totally different business and you can get them to fight each other on price. However, consumer sucks coconuts and their customer service is hell incarnate on earth.

When you call business tech support you get actual technical people that actually know what they are doing. However, you need to also know what you are doing, they will not set up your home network for you.

I think they still mess with bit torrent though since my Blizzard uploads fade in speed over time.

I have Comcast Consumer Class internet and I currently don't have a cap since they dropped them while they reevaluate. What is funny was while I had a 250 GB cap I would always try to use most of it each month to feel like I got my money's worth. However, since they removed the cap I have actually used a lot less per month. Went from an average of 225 GB/month to 125 GB/month after the cap removal.

I almost initially signed up for Business Class, but decided to go the cheaper and faster capped route. My usage fell within the old cap so I'll trade that for cheaper and faster and currently the same cap, none.

Definitely a rip off when you consider those speeds. My 25/25 FIOS package is $100/month and that includes their Ultimate TV package. Obviously, FIOS isn't available everywhere, but the point remains the same.

I disagree with the premise of this article. You talk about "voting with your wallet" and then support the crappy business practices you complain about by giving them more money. They don't deserve your money! Rent some hosting somewhere else to reduce your home "consumption" and pay for the least connection you can get away with.

ISPs buy peak capacity and sell by the byte. That is wrong and should not be supported by paying for extras, especially non-net-neutral ones (see "w/out video" on your bill)

lol, I have 'business class' Road Runner in the rural south at 50/5 for $100 a month. You're getting completely ripped off.

Hell, even I'm getting ripped off, but you're taking it in the pooper

Well businesses have been taking it in the "pooper" when it comes to a lot of services. Their long distance is costlier. One thing that isn't mentioned but should be obvious is that if one is either using their connection for businesses purposes, or are a telecommuter; their financial circumstances are going to be different. For example telecommuters will have their employer footing the bill. While businesses have tax incentives that ease the burden.

2Mbit up on a webserver? Does that really provide enough bandwidth? I'd have thought a symmetric 12Mbit would be minimum - especially now that Google evaluates speed of the site as well as content...

I've gone the other way - I run one of my businesses out of my home, and have a residential connection because I get a 40/3Mbit connection for $30/month. I don't get a fixed IP, but I've set up a record for a subdomain that points to the IP, and it hasn't changed in 2-3 years, so I'm guessing they have a large enough IP pool that they don't really bother reassigning leases. If I have to change the A-record every few years, so be it.

I looked into Time Warner Business Class around a year ago when I moved to the Columbus, Ohio area... 35/5 was $320/month compared to residential 30/5 for $79.99/mo. According to the business class rep I talked with, the main differences were prioritized traffic on their network, priority service, and a static IP address. No caps or blocked ports on the residential connection.

Just wasn't a way to make that huge price difference make sense for home use, though I'm sure you have no choice but to get the business class connection at a business address. On the 30/5 residential connection I went with, I've almost always gotten my full bandwidth (per SamKnows), when the network goes down it's pretty much the entire thing, and my IP address hasn't changed in over a year.

Without a snarky, what the market supports answer, I'm curious if there's any consensus on how much broadband should cost.

I had 15/5 FiOS for a year and when they raised the price to $65/mo I was done. I switched to RCN providing me 15/2 for ~$40/mo. It's not that home broadband isn't a valuable service, and I'm lucky to have 3 options in my town, but the Verizon premium was absurd.

I'm kinda surprised that someone with the wherewithal to set up 4+ Linux servers hasn't figured out that buying a modem is probably cheaper than paying to rent hardware in perpetuity. $7 a month might not seem like much, but... oh wait. It's $2 more than the price of your static IP or 3/4 of what it would cost me to double the 30/7 I'm getting on FiOS.

At this point, if you told Comcast that you were thinking of moving to Verizon, they'd likely bump your speed a bit just to keep you.

ISP contracts are like plants, not garden gnomes. You gotta tend to them, not just drop them into place and forget about them. There's no reason you shouldn't be re-negotiating every time your contract is up.

I live roughly 10 miles outside the city limits of the US city with the highest concentration of engineers in the country and one of the highest ratios of PhDs. My options for internet are satellite (no way in hell) or a T1 line @ $422/month. Reliability and customer service are off the charts with the T1 line. I've had problems twice over the last four years and they've been out to fix the line within an hour, even at 10pm on a Friday night. Even when power was out for a week in the area (tornados), I just had to supply power to the router and internet ran great. Just wish it was faster than 1.5Mbps.

If the opportunity comes up, I will move somewhere locally with better connectivity, but that hasn't happened yet.

As mentioned in the article, it all depends on where you are. Currently I'm paying about $65/mo after taxes for 30/5Mbit consumer connection with Time Warner Cable. I've considered going the business route so I can get a (hopefully) more stable connection and a static IP so I can host my mail. Unfortunately, in this area [DFW], the prices are obscene.

Yes, for basically the same speed I have now, it would cost me an additional $300/mo for a static IP address. Yowch!

U-Verse doesn't appear to do business class around here, the site redirects to standard DSL listings if you click business. The DSL here sucks. The last time I had [at multiple addresses] it AT&T struggled to deliver 6Mbit which is the fastest they advertise [6M/768k] which is nigh on useless these days.

Count me among those that are appalled at the state of broadband in the US. It's not like I live in the middle of nowhere. DFW is the 4th largest metropolitan area in the US [almost 7 million people] and one of the largest urban agglomerations in the world [rank 59th] It's just sad.

I don't doubt you have a good service but it's still expensive. I pay about 30$ (depends on the € rate) for 100 down / 20 up (fiber to the desk) ; no caps, no TS, no blocked ports (AFAIK). I don´t have a static IP though but I don't need one.

My mother uses business class internet because her local personal comcast loop is congested.My mother lives a frugal lifestyle except for her speedy internet, and for whatever reason, it really does make a big difference in northwest Alabama.